From left: Paula Del Nunzio and 7 West 54th Street
An office building on West 54th Street is hitting the market at just less than $4,000 per square foot, the most expensive asking price ever for an office property, according to the Wall Street Journal. The building is a Beaux-Arts mansion at 7 West 54th Street, between Fifth and Sixth avenues, that was built more than a century ago as the home of Philip Lehman, the former head of Lehman Brothers. [more]
From left: exterior and interior of 41 East 70th Street, Janice Nittoli, president of the Century Foundation and Paula Del Nunzio, senior vice president with Brown Harris Stevens
After languishing on the market for almost five years, the Rothschild Mansion has found a buyer. The 11,110-square-foot home at 41 East 70th Street, most recently listed for $30 million, went into contract last Wednesday, according to the listing, although the identity of the buyer is unknown since the sale has not yet closed. [more]
From left: Malcolm Forbes, Brown Harris Stevens' Paula Del Nunzio and the exterior and interior of 11 West 12th Street
The Malcolm S. Forbes townhouse in Greenwich Village, which has been on the market since last February, has finally found a buyer, according to Streeteasy.com and a New York City residential tracking report by Olshan Realty, released today.
The 6,800-square-foot townhouse, between Fifth and Sixth avenues, went into contract this past Saturday, Streeteasy.com data shows. Its most recent asking price was $13.5 million. [more]
The interior and exterior of 4 East 80th Street and Brown Harris Stevens broker Paula Del Nunzio
A disgruntled former employee of the Lucille Roberts’ workout chain is suspected of vandalizing its late founder’s $90 million Upper East Side mansion and her company’s place of business, the New York Post reported, slashing it with white paint and shooting it with BB pellets.
Kirk Roberts, the company’s president and son of the late businesswoman, also received three anonymous letters of a threatening nature — one containing an unknown white powder –to the office of Lucille Roberts at 4 East 80th Street, the Post said. [more]
From the December issue: As the year draws to a close, the future seems as opaque as a glass of eggnog. Some real estate professionals say pent-up demand in the residential market could foster a busy 2012, while others predict that a sluggish economy will keep prices and activity in check.
Citi Habitats vice president Jay Molishever said the high rents, relatively low sales prices and increasing activity he is seeing in the current market are good signs for the New Year.
“At some point,” he said, “the kindling is going to burst into flames again,” bringing high prices and high volume. [more]
High-profile art mogul Larry Gagosian has just closed on the Harkness Mansion, the more than 20,000-square-foot townhouse at 4 East 75th Street, for $36.5 million, the New York Post reported.
J. Christopher Flowers, the private equity magnate who, in 2006, logged the city’s priciest residential transaction ever with his $53 million purchase of the property, got serious about his search for a buyer for the townhouse in the wake of a separation from his wife last year.
In 2009, it was reported that Flowers, who had already put more than $4 million worth of renovations into the 114-year-old, 50-foot-wide mansion, wanted around $50 million for the home. Flowers bought the home from banking heir Jacqui Safra, who used to produce Woody Allen movies. [Post, 1st item]
A $90 million mansion on the Upper East Side is renting for $165,000 a
month, Curbed reported. The property, at 4 East 80th Street, had been on
the rental market since January with an ask of $210,000 a month, and the price dropped to $165,000 this week. It
had originally been listed for $90 million in March with Brown Harris
Stevens broker Paula Del Nunzio, at the time likely the highest-ever
official asking price for a single-family home in Manhattan. As The
Real Deal reported earlier this year, the building was originally
commissioned by Robert Woolworth, and had been owned by the estate of
fitness mogul Lucille
Roberts. Del Nunzio told The Real Deal in June that the townhouse’s renovation
made it unique on the market and that not only were all the original
details of Woolworth’s architect still intact, but they had also been
“meticulously retored.” [Curbed] [more]
From the June issue: In March, Brown Harris Stevens broker Paula Del Nunzio put the Woolworth mansion at 4 East 80th Street on the market for $90 million. The listing — the priciest Manhattan residential listing ever — signaled that the era of massively expensive property sales is back, with a vengeance. Brokers say there is more high-end product on the market than last year, and furthermore, many of these new, pricey listings are resales rather than the newly constructed condos that seemed to dominate the luxury market in Manhattan for so long. That trend is reflected in The Real Deal’s annual ranking of the city’s top brokers, which is based on who is marketing the most Manhattan property.
The recent death of heiress Huguette Clark — who grew up in a 121-room Fifth Avenue mansion — evokes a different era of city living, when the well-to-do lived in spacious, single-family houses as a matter of course, even as other New Yorkers squeezed into crowded tenements.
In recent decades, New Yorkers rich and poor have embraced apartment life. But the recent resurgence of high-end real estate, and in particular the flourishing townhouse market, feels somewhat reminiscent of Clark’s heyday. After a hiatus during the worst of the Great Recession, the trend of multi-tenant rental buildings commanding top-dollar as conversions to single-family homes has accelerated. [more]
It’s been a tumultuous decade for the 13-room townhouse at 870 Park Avenue. Originally listed for $23 million in 2004, it’s plowed through a roster of the city’s most elite real estate brokers, endured the market’s boom and bust, and has a lengthy history of price hikes and cuts to match. In December, still unsold, it found itself at the center of a divorce settlement and was transferred for $10 million to Winick Realty executive Lori Shabtai after she split from former owner Benny Shabtai, the Raymond Weil watch mogul.
But it looks like the 12,000-square-foot mansion has finally found someone who actually wants it. The four-story residence, whose façade was designed by 15 Central Park West architect Robert A.M. Stern and which was most recently priced at $24.5 million by Prudential Douglas Elliman vice chairman Dolly Lenz, entered into contract this past Friday. [more]
